Smoke on the Water

The song describes the real events. The group decided to record their new album outside of England to avoid unnecessary taxes ^[3] , and in December 1971 the musicians gathered in the Swiss town of Montreux to record the album at a mobile studio, rented from the Rolling Stones and known as the Rolling Stones Mobile . It was decided to record in the entertainment center of the casino of Montreux (in the song “the gambling house”), in which they had already been to concerts. On the eve of the studio session, on Saturday, December 4, Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention held a concert at the casino theater, as part of their European tour. This was the last concert in this hall, after which he had to go to Deep Purple to record an album. In order to avoid misunderstanding, the group decided not to unload the equipment, which turned out to be a happy decision later ^[3] .

About an hour after the beginning of the concert, during the synthesizer solo on King Kong, sparks appeared from behind the suspended bamboo ceiling and then fire — obviously one of the spectators (who could not be found) fired a rocket launcher at the roof (“some stupid with a flare gun "). Zappa calmly said “do not panic, we have a fire” (perhaps they themselves did not notice anything and told them themselves), after which the musicians left the stage. The spectators were evacuated in a rather organized manner, there were no casualties. The song mentions “funky Claude”, which “ran and ran out,” is the director of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Claude Nobs , who helped the audience out of the hall. Among the spectators were participants and Deep Purple. According to Glover, the fire at first was so weak that during the evacuation he managed to re-enter the hall, move closer to the empty stage, examine Zappa’s equipment with the band and be impressed by the two newest synthesizers ^[3] .

As a result of the fire, the entire multi-storey casino complex burned to the ground, along with the concert hall and the equipment of The Mothers (which was insured, but concerts in France and Belgium had to be canceled). From the Europe Hotel, where Deep Purple members stayed, the musicians watched through a large window of the restaurant, as the casino was in flames (helped by the wind blowing from the mountains) and saw a curtain of smoke over Lake Geneva .

The group, which had already rented an expensive studio, had to look for a new room throughout the city. Soon, Nobs found for them the Pavilion Theater, located in the city center. The equipment was transported there and began to work in the middle of the day on the instrumental track with the new riff prepared by Blackmore, still without text, under the working title “Title # 1”. The debugging of the equipment and the development of the arrangements took the rest of the day, and the actual duplicates began to be recorded already after midnight. The third double was successful, and they stopped on it. As it turned out, all this time, the staff tried to keep the police squad behind the locked doors, which was caused by the surrounding residents because of the noise. Due to the fact that the police were detained, they managed to finish the track recording ^[3] .

Since the musicians did not work only during the daytime, they had to look for a new hall. Many demands were made of the premises, and his search took 5-6 days. One of these days of waiting, Glover woke up in a hotel room, uttering the words "smoke on the water" at the moment of awakening. When he later reported these words to Gillan, he said that they sound like “drug like sounds” (“sounds like a drug song”), and, referring themselves exclusively to “drinking” groups, they initially rejected these words ^[3] .

In the end, already in time-trouble , the group removed the entire Grand Hotel, which was located on the outskirts and was almost empty, and therefore practically unheated in December (“We’re up at the Grand Hotel,” , turning its T-shaped corridor on the first floor into an improvised studio. I had to specially hire a joiner for the construction of a wooden shield that fenced off the foyer, and lay mattresses from the hotel rooms over the shield. An industrial heater was rented, which was included in the breaks several times a day. From a nearby parked studio held cables to the hotel. Since the entrance to the foyer was blocked by a shield, the musicians got inside and made their way back to the street to the mobile studio through a side corridor and the balconies of adjacent adjoining rooms. The space where they played was illuminated with red spotlights to create a creative atmosphere ("We made it a bit more sweet ...") ^[3] . Drum parts were recorded separately in the hotel corridor, as Ian Pace loved the reverberation of the hall between the rooms.

In such conditions, the entire Machine Head album was recorded. And on the instrumental track, recorded earlier in the "Pavilion", a newly written text with the refrain "Smoke on the Water" was superimposed.

Of all the compositions of the album, the song “Smoke on the Water” was included in the most recent concert program of 1972 , it happened at the end of May.

Smoke on the Water is known for its well-recognized guitar riff - a syncopated melody in a bluesy fret, in parallel quarts . Richie Blackmore performs this riff on the Fender Stratocaster guitar by simultaneously pinching two fingers of two strings, for complete simultaneity of their sound (the game is called double-stop). [1] In the introduction, hi-hat , Hammond organ , drums and bass guitar are successively joined to the guitar.

In 1966, the Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto released an album in collaboration with American pianist Jill Evans called "Look to the Rainbow". The piano introduction to the song “Maria Moite” (Maria Quiet in the English version) [2] almost completely coincides with the Smoke on the Water riff. This sets the stage for speculating about borrowing the melody for the riff from this song; however, unlike, for example, from Child in Time , in this case there is no reliable data on conscious borrowing.

In September 2017, researchers from the San Francisco-based American biotechnology firm Twist Bioscience, Microsoft Research and the University of Washington in Seattle reported that they were the first to manage to record and play archival-quality music recordings on DNA ^{[4] [5]} ; The compositions used in the experiment were the “Smoke on the Water” groups of Deep Purple and “Tutu” by the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis , which together made up 140 megabytes of information ^[6] . These innovative recordings were deposited in the archives of the Montreux Jazz Festival under the auspices of the UNESCO Memory of the World archive program ^[7] .

In concert, the song was later recorded by later Deep Purple compositions with vocalist David Coverdale , as well as the Ian Gillan Band , Gillan and Rainbow bands. In 1989, she was released on the compilation Rock Aid Armenia , as well as a separate single performed by the musicians of Deep Purple and the national team of the most famous rock musicians; The proceeds from the sale of the single went to the fund to help the victims of the earthquake in Leninakan (now Gyumri ) and Spitak , Armenia .

Ritchie Blackmore , who now plays in Blackmore's Night , continues to perform "Smoke on the Water" at concerts. The vocal part is performed by his spouse and bandmate Candice Knight .

Gillan performed the composition as part of the Black Sabbath band during their tour Born Again Tour 1983 in 1983-1984. In 2011, a recording of a song made during one of the concerts was released on the re-released Born Again disc.

Under the title “Smoke on the Water” in 1994 Shrapnel Records released a Deep Purple tribute band, which was attended by vocalists Joe Lynn Turner, Glenn Hughes and Jeff Scott Soto, as well as a guitar group ( Yngwie Malmsteen , Vinnie Moore , Don Dokken, Paul Gilbert , Tony McAlpin , Dean Castronovo) and keyboards ( Jens Johansson and all the same Tony McAlpin) virtuosos. The song itself on this album is the seventh track.

There are numerous late cover versions of the song, including Iron Maiden , Yngwie Malmsteen , Dream Theater , Sepultura , G3 ( Joe Satriani , John Petrucci and Steve Vai Live In Tokyo, 2005), Jon Bon Jovi with Bruce Springsteen , Soulfly , Six Feet Under , Vains of Jenna , Santana , Brian May , Buranovskie grandmothers . The song was reworked in country , thrash metal , black metal , and power metal styles, a folk song among others.

The Russian rock band The Prophet has combined the song with the text of the Russian folk song " Oh, frost, frost ."

• Lyrics
• Frank Zappa Gig List: 1971
• Translation of the song
• Creation facts and translations
• (eng.) Roger Glover. Machine Head Remembered ... Booklet of the anniversary edition of Machine Head, EMI, 1997
• Fragment of the program of Seva Novgorodtseva about Deep Purple